By Pat Flynn on July 9, 2012

In this session of The Smart Passive Income Podcast you’ll hear a revised (blog & podcast-friendly) version of my recent solo presentation at Blog World Expo in New York, which is all about how I manage to earn a significant income from affiliate marketing without using aggressive or forceful marketing tactics and hardly any pitch at all.

In general, affiliate marketing has somewhat of a negative connotation, but my goal was to show that you can make a significant income from affiliate marketing while at the same time strengthen the relationship that you have with your audience and keep them coming back for more.

The Soft Pitch Pipeline

A well-balanced “pipeline” or user experience through your site and your brand, like what’s shown above, is exactly what you should shoot for.

The better the relationship you have with your audience, the more careful you are about the products that you actually promote, the more you can share about your own experiences with those products and any sort of proof that goes along with it, the softer the sell can be and the more your audience will appreciate your recommendations.

Use affiliate marketing as a tool to help your audience, and the commissions will come.

Thank you all for listening, and if you haven’t done so already, please use the links below to subscribe to the podcast feed! Or, if you have an iPhone or iPad, download the SPI iPhone application and listen to the podcast from there.

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You'll Learn

The model or "experience" that I take my readers which requires very little pitching in order to eventually make a sale.

The one component that's absolutely necessary in order for any transaction to happen on your website.

Why the old way of teaching affiliate marketing has led to so much failure.

3 strategies you can use to speed up the relationship building process and connect on a deeper level with your audience much faster.

The one question that you must be able to answer in order to succeed with affiliate marketing, and how the answer to that one question can show you precisely what products you should be promoting to your audience.

What Amazon.com teaches us about affiliate marketing.

Why promoting a product that you didn't use yourself can be extremely harmful to you and your brand.

How science and mirror neurons play a role in how we should be promoting affiliate products.

The specific kind of proof that enabled me to increase my earnings for one particular affiliate product from $4000/month to $15,000/month.

5 not-so-popular tips that you can use at the exact point of sale (where you place affiliate links on your site) to help increase earnings.

Resources

Note: some of the resources below may be affiliate links, meaning I get paid a commission (at no extra cost to you) if you use that link to make a purchase.

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I think affiliate programs have kind of created a bad name for themselves over the past few years due to people abusing them and creating spammy websites that do everything they can to deceive the consumer.

I’ve personally seen referral programs coming to light recently as the new replacement. They’re essentially the same thing but the referrer themselves are users of each and every product and are making recommendations. The most important thing is honesty. If a product or service isn’t good then an affiliate marketer should be honest with their audience and say that.

There’s definitely still room for affiliate marketing, as long as you take an honest angle on it.

I have been making money online as an affiliate for more than 7yrs now and what I learned from this business is that it can be insanely profitable but you have to focus if you are supposed to succeed with it. If you are moving from niche to niche and from systems to systems, then you will reach no where. Kudos to Pat, a pioneer in the industry!

Kim Clement

Thanks for this podcast. You have been extremely helpful to me! I love the visual with the pipeline.